My sister dropped her kids off at my house and demanded I babysit them while she goes on an 8 week vacation, when I threatened to report her to the police, she arranged to have me assaulted in my own home so she could take them back.
My sister dropped her kids off at my house and demanded I babysit them while she went on an eight-week vacation. When I threatened to report her to the police, she arranged to have me assaulted in my own home so she could take them back.
Unlike real gold, kids raised as golden children never turn out to be as pure as their parents see them. Growing up, my sister always got her way, no matter how nasty or irrational she acted toward me. She got away with it all the time, and that was because she was the golden miracle child.
What aided this, most likely, was also that my sister was stunningly beautiful. She had thick curly hair and light eyes, and my mom spent a lifetime comparing our looks. I have dark eyes and straight hair, and I was never as pretty as my sister. My mom loved making comments comparing us. After we both became teenagers, she was constantly telling me to try and dress like my sister and asking her to teach me makeup. But my sister would also bully me and make fun of me if I ever asked her for help making myself prettier.
That is how we grew up to be extremely resentful of each other. I think my sister just latched on to the worst traits that we saw in my mother, while I rejected them all. I think being put on a pedestal her whole life by my mom for simply being beautiful turned her into a rotten person who does not care about anyone but herself and thinks she can get away with anything just because of her looks.
The way my mom compared us and put me down led to me having a lot of self-esteem issues, and as an adult, I am very quiet and reserved. Some people describe me as a pushover. Recently, I have been going to therapy to try to grow a stronger spine, even though it has been hard trying to stand up for myself in my relationships. For the very first time, I feel like the way my family treated me really screwed me up as an adult, and it is hard for me to maintain any healthy friendships or romantic relationships.
My sister even slept with my boyfriend in high school, in senior year, and for no real reason. She never liked him and told me many times she thought he was ugly. My parents told me to let bygones be bygones when they found out what had happened. My sister was not even told off, and that was a moment where I truly realized just how much they preferred her over me.
The way my dad just stood by and watched my mom emotionally get under my skin for my entire life made me feel like no man would ever stand up for me or see worth in me. It is very hard for me to trust and connect when dating. But my entire life has not been completely awful because of my mom and sister, because the one upside of being the ugly sister growing up meant that I had zero social life and spent all my time studying.
I ended up graduating high school with a 4.0 and landed myself a full ride at my number one choice for university, which was great because my mom told me the night before I started high school that she was paying for my sister’s college since she was the eldest, but I would have to go to community college and pay my way through it on my own. I remember sobbing and asking her why she did not love me like she loved my sister, and she insisted that she did, but my sister deserved it more since she was her firstborn.
The day I landed my scholarship, I spent the entire day so excited to tell my parents about it. I guess part of me was kind of happy to have something that my sister did not. My sister had spent all her time in high school partying and earning poor grades without any flak from my parents, and she was only going to college because my parents could pay for it. She was not even going to a very good one because her grades were so bad.
So the day I rushed home to tell my family that I had gotten a full ride to a prestigious university, I had never been so excited to share good news with them. But when I got home and told my parents about my scholarship, all my dad said was, “Good job,” and my mom did not even look up from her phone or give me any response. Then she ignored me for the entire week after I had shared that news.
I tried to ask her why she was mad at me for getting a scholarship for college, but she literally just avoided making eye contact with me and walked into the other room. It was like she literally hated me for earning my scholarship, when most parents would be excited. Whatever. That was when I started to understand just how alone I was and how isolated my family wanted me to feel.
I did not understand why either. Why had my mom even had me just to spend a lifetime hating me, and in turn making me hate myself? The day I got my scholarship turned into one of the worst days of my life, as I cried myself to sleep and accepted that I would never have a family that loved me. Not like my sister did. And I despised her for it.
That night, I wrote in my journal until the sun rose about what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. I was tired of being this sad little girl, and I decided I was going to transform every ounce of rage I had into academic success. Instead of throwing myself a pity party and begging my parents for love and attention, I was going to redirect all my focus and energy to my studies, as I always had, and give myself something they never could. I was going to be stable, independent, intelligent, and educated, even though I might never be loved.
So that is exactly what I did. I went to school and graduated with honors. I got a fantastic position in a company I interned for right out of college, and I have been making six figures since I turned twenty-three. When I came home for the holidays, I would tell my family about how I was doing, and I would get random compliments from extended family members, but my own parents never went out of their way to acknowledge or congratulate me for my accomplishments.
As an adult, I knew better than to tell my mom about my high position at my company or how much I was making, since I knew it would just make her resent me more. But I told my dad, and one year, he even told me that he was happy for me, and it was the nicest thing either of my parents had ever told me. But even as an adult, my mom still treated me like an unwanted guest, and although I only saw them during the holidays, she would do everything in her power to get the attention off me if anybody asked me a question or directed the conversation toward me.
For example, we were having Christmas dinner one year when my uncle congratulated me on a promotion I had been telling him about earlier that day. It was my second promotion within the company, and I had gotten a significant raise as well. I had been telling him about how I was looking into purchasing my first house. My uncle mentioned the promotion and the potential house, and a few other extended family members congratulated me and were pretty unexpectedly kind about the news.
Another one of my cousins asked me what area I was house shopping in, and that was when my mom cut me off and said, “This is boring. Can we change the conversation?” Then, under her breath, I heard her say, “It is probably not even true anyway.”
I ended up purchasing my house later that year, and when I posted about it on social media, everybody in my family liked the post except for my mom. I knew she was probably angry because my sister was having a completely opposite life experience than me. She had gone to college right out of high school, all paid for by my parents, and ended up failing out and getting pregnant by her first college boyfriend.
I had a sneaking suspicion that my parents had asked her to get rid of the pregnancy, but she ended up keeping it and tried making it work with her baby dad, whom she had only known for four months. Well, it turned out that they were completely incompatible, but I guess that did not stop them from trying to make things work or solve their relationship by having another kid.
I remember having to hold back tears when I saw her posting about having a second child, since I knew the baby was probably being born into a toxic environment, because my sister was such an awful person, as was her baby dad. I had met him at the holidays, but he never even bothered to remember my name or make conversation with me, and every year he would bring home trays of food despite not bringing anything.
Obviously, my sister’s and my relationship did not improve as we grew up, and we basically did not talk to each other once we were both moved out of our parents’ place. We had each other on social media, and the few times we would see each other during the holidays, my sister would make nasty comments to me about my weight or the way I was dressing.
I honestly think she was just projecting because I wear a lot of designer clothes, and I like cycling through my designer purses. She would constantly ask me what fake purse I had brought this time. One year, as soon as I walked in the door for Thanksgiving, she looked me up and down and said, verbatim, “I see you are dressed up again like the stuck-up bitch you are.”
It was so ridiculously rude and uncalled for, and she would even constantly insult me right in front of her kids, using curses and everything, despite her kids being young. I do not feel bad saying that my sister is pure trash, and that I did not feel bad for anything I did after she dumped her kids on my doorstep out of nowhere one day.
I had just been relaxing in my house one weekend morning after a long workweek when my doorbell rang, and I was completely shocked to see my sister’s ten- and seven-year-old standing on my front porch holding overnight bags. When I asked them what they were doing there, they said their mom was going on vacation for eight weeks and that she said I was watching them.
My sister and I had not spoken since our family’s July Fourth barbecue, where she told me not to have more than one plate because she was sick of staring at my muffin top. I had no idea why she thought I would be her free babysitter for two months. My nephews were good, quiet kids who were obviously confused as well, so I let them inside while I started calling my sister.
My sister ignored my first ten calls, but I kept at it until she finally answered. As soon as she picked up, I said that there was no way I was watching her kids, and that if she was not there to pick them up herself as soon as possible, then I would be calling CPS on her. I was literally Googling the number for Child Protective Services while I had her on speaker when she dropped a bombshell on me.
Her voice got incredibly deep and scary as she blackmailed me by saying that she would call my job and inform them that I was not taking my bipolar medication and get me fired. Even though my sister was an idiot who did not understand anything about my job, my career was the most important thing to me, and I could not risk anyone threatening my position there. I just hung up after she said that and tried to figure out what to do next.
I felt like my head was going to explode from the stress. Not only could I not watch her kids, but I had a trip planned a month from then to go visit my long-distance boyfriend, Eric, all the way in Australia and meet his family for the first time. We had been dating for a while, and I had been anticipating this trip all year. It was so important since he was introducing me to his mom and dad, and I wanted it to go perfectly.
Now my life was thrown into chaos, all because of my sister, and I had no idea what I was going to do. I had no idea who else to call other than my mom, and I should not have been surprised that she sided with my sister just like she had literally always done. I told my mom that my sister had not even come to drop her own kids off, and she said that they were old enough to come to my house alone anyway.
My mom started guilting me and saying that my sister had done a lot for me, and that I needed to be there for her just this one time since I never was. That made me lose my mind, and I screamed at her at the top of my lungs and asked her to tell me one single time where my sister had been there for me or improved my life in any way.
I told my mom that both she and my sister had never been there for me and had treated me like I was some unwashed dog in their house instead of their own family. I demanded my mom visit me so that worst-case scenario, I could leave my mom in my house while I flew to Australia as my nephews’ caretaker instead of me. I had very little hope that my sister would abandon her trip to come back for her kids since she was so quick to dump them on me.
When my mom finally got to my place, she was cold as ever and looked at me with the same hateful eyes that she always had for me. We sat down in my living room, and my mom explained to me that I was being an awful sibling to my sister, as always, and lectured me about family being there in each other’s times of need.
I ignored all my mom’s appeasing crap and demanded to know exactly what kind of vacation my sister was on that was so important she would forget her kids and leave them with someone who essentially hated her, despite being her own sister. I told my mom that everything about this was weird and suspicious, and my sister disappearing for eight weeks out of nowhere and leaving two young kids behind made no sense. I wanted the truth if I was going to be involved without consent like this.
That was when my mom’s face changed, and eventually, she admitted to me that my sister was not just going on some vacation. She was actually being flown out by her sugar daddy. I literally laughed when she said this because I thought she was joking, but her face was dead serious. I was so emotionally exhausted at that point, and I freaked out on my mom, asking her how she could be okay with this in any way.
I told her that she had raised a complete loser of a daughter who left the country to go see a sugar daddy instead of just getting a job to support her kids. My mom, of course, threw all my words back in my face and defended my sister as she always had. At one point, she even said that it did not matter how much money I had or how nice my house was, that I would always just be the ugly duckling compared to my sister. Born ugly, and I was going to die ugly.
After she said that, I had to restrain myself from grabbing her by the shirt and throwing her out of my house. When I screamed at my mom to get the hell out of my house, she yelled back that she was not going anywhere, and when I tried directing her out of the room, she pushed me with all her strength into a coffee table that had one of my favorite vases on it. My boyfriend had gifted it to me the last time he had visited us, and it was one of my favorite possessions. After my mom pushed me into the coffee table, it fell on the floor and broke into a bunch of little pieces.
Looking at the vase destroyed on the floor made me feel just as broken, and I think I had a full-on mental breakdown and started screaming and crying at my mom to get out of my house or I was calling the police on her. I feel so bad because my nephews could definitely hear me from the other room, but I was a mess at that point. It had been such a long, painful day.
After I finally managed to get my mom out of the house, my nephew poked his head out of the room and asked me if everything was all right. Their eyes were so wide, and they looked so nervous and sad that it just broke my heart. Even though I did not know them very well at all, they were just kids with a mess of a mother, and I felt so bad for them in that moment.
I ordered DoorDash for all of us and let them watch movies and play video games in my living room until they passed out late. When I finally got through to my sister, I immediately started yelling at her for completely disrupting my life, and I brought up CPS again. My sister just gave me this sinister laugh over the phone and told me again that it was my own choice. I could either watch her kids or lose my job.
At one point, she hissed that she knew I was nothing without my job and that I would go back to being a loser without it. This stung me right in the heart because it was the honest truth. I had my degree and a solid resume, but I really identified with my career success, and I would do anything not to lose it. At that point, I was crying and asking my sister why she hated me so much and why she had abandoned her little kids for a sugar daddy.
She just said that she was the type of woman who could make millions from a sugar daddy in two months, and that was something I never had to worry about. I think she was just trying to break me down and make me feel small at that point, so I just gave up. Honestly, it was working. We went back and forth for a while until my sister literally hung up on me after a final threat of contacting my job, and I just broke down in tears again, realizing that I had no power against her.
My nephews were downstairs watching a movie in the living room, so I had privacy upstairs and decided to call my boyfriend. I had not had a chance to talk to him since my nephews had been left on my doorstep, and I ended up breaking down and venting to him about all the details of the situation. I could not hold back tears as I told him about my sister’s threats and my mom’s continued disrespect, and told him how I felt completely trapped by my sister.
Even though he was on the other side of the planet, my boyfriend made me feel so loved and supported and was literally the only person who was in my corner. I am so grateful for him. He said that my sister was potentially committing multiple crimes by abandoning her kids and threatening me with career blackmail, and that I needed to get some solid evidence of her actions.
He suggested that I contact my sister again and try to get her to repeat her threat about the false medical accusations, but this time secretly record the conversation as evidence. My boyfriend knew about my past with my sister and my mom, and pointed out that my sister was clearly unhinged, and it would not take a lot for her to act on this threat. He said I should do everything to prepare.
Of course, it freaked me out to hear that, but he was one hundred percent right. I knew my sister was insane more than anybody, and I decided to go with his plan, even though I was still feeling very emotionally overwhelmed by everything that was happening. I still wanted my nephews to feel comfortable and cared for. I knew what it felt like to be a child in a home where you were not wanted, and I did not ever want to make these innocent little boys who were related to me feel that way.
I ended up going downstairs and playing a multiplayer video game with them for a little while, and it ended up being really fun. They were so surprised when I knew how to play first-person shooters, and they were so cute as they giggled and laughed while watching me get kill after kill. I was not expecting to bond with them after such a stressful weekend, but when we all ordered pizza together and had a contest to see who could eat the most pieces of pepperoni, I realized that I honestly loved the two little boys.
They were nothing like their mom. Even though I knew my sister could not have been a great parent, they were both super polite, and even though it took a little while for them to come out of their shells, they were both really sweet, funny little boys. They were very good about cleaning up after themselves and were always saying please and thank you.
As I was hanging out with my nephews into the afternoon, I realized that they both had holes in their socks, and my older nephew’s clothes looked sort of small on him. I looked through the rest of the clothes my sister had packed for them and realized that they were all either old or too small for the boys they were meant for. Again, I was not incredibly surprised that my sister was a cheap, neglectful parent, and I decided to take my nephews to the mall for some new wardrobes.
I almost cried multiple times during that trip to the mall because my nephews completely came out of their shells and were so excited and happy running around the mall. Like I said, I remember what it felt like to be a neglected child, and I just wanted them to feel like they could have anything they wanted, and that I was there for them and wanted to make them happy. So anytime we walked past a window and they wanted to go into a store, we would go in, and I kept buying them whatever they wanted. It was impossible not to.
My youngest nephew was missing his two front teeth, and every time he gave me his goofy little empty smile, my heart ached, and I had to buy him another little treat or toy. They left the mall that day with new clothes that looked great on them and fit them comfortably, and I had also bought them both Nintendo Switches. It was so hard not to spoil them. I did not have kids of my own, and I had plenty of money to buy them the little things they wanted.
When I bought them the Switches, both of them broke down crying and hugged me. I noticed the ten-year-old had started crying again during our ride home, and I asked him if he was okay. He looked at me through the tears in his eyes and asked me why I was being so nice to them and why they deserved it. I told him that they deserved my kindness because they were my boys too, and that they were kids, and that alone meant they deserved to be happy.
This only seemed to make him cry harder, and he told me that he was feeling angry at his mom for keeping us apart. This broke my heart, and I told him that I was sorry we had not been able to get to know each other before, but I was really happy that he and his brother were there with me now, even if I had not expected it.
I asked him some questions about how his home life was, and it was exactly as I expected. My older and younger nephew both slowly started to open up to me about how much their mom poorly treated them at times. My heart felt like it shattered into a million pieces as I heard this. I knew that my sister and her baby dad were horrible people who were probably doing it, but it was another thing to hear it straight from their mouths and hear the pain in their voices.
When we got home, I cooked a big dinner for all of us, and they played on their Switches together for the rest of the night. I left them alone in the living room to go call my sister again in my room, ready to play out the plan my boyfriend had given me. This time, I tried my best to stay calm and collected on the phone, even though I wanted to call my sister every name in the book.
It was not difficult to steer the conversation toward the medical accusation. As soon as I brought up CPS again, my sister freaked out and threw the threat in my face, insisting I would be fired for being crazy in secret and saying that she did not care if I was actually taking my medication or not. Nobody was going to know if she was lying. She just kept telling me that nobody would believe a crazy sicko like me and that I did not deserve my job anyway.
I honestly think my sister might have been on drugs herself during this call because she sounded strung out and just kept repeating crazy phrases. After I had gotten what I needed out of the call, I hung up on my sister as she just kept saying that I did not deserve anything in this life. I did not deserve anything, over and over again.
Whatever. I pushed her words out of my mind as I made sure that I had recorded the entire call successfully. I had my sister recorded on audio saying that she was going to make false medical accusations to my employer. I realized how genius my boyfriend had been to suggest getting this recording, and I started emotionally preparing myself for the fallout if my sister followed through with her threat.
After getting the recording, I tried my best to calm down and put my nephews to bed. The next morning, before they woke up, I called CPS as soon as the line opened and reported the entire situation. I explained how my sister had abandoned her children and how we were completely estranged. I even went so far as to say that she had not only abandoned them, but left them there under completely false pretenses and then used manipulation and coercion to force me to take care of them.
I was surprised that CPS was actually pretty helpful, and I shared the recording with them. The agent I spoke to took a moment to listen to the recording and said that it was clear my sister was using blackmail to neglect her children and was certainly committing a litany of crimes. The agent informed me that they would be opening an investigation immediately and that my sister would be contacted as soon as possible.
I was shaking after the call and tried to decompress the best that I could and spend the rest of the day with my nephews, relaxing and bonding with them. My mom ended up calling me the next day, and I really have no idea why I even picked up. I think I was just still so disoriented and emotionally vulnerable, and I ended up getting into another huge fight with her over the phone. I let it slip to her that I had gone and called CPS and that my sister would finally pay for the way she treated me. My mom hung up as soon as I said that.
I will be honest. I was shaking after those calls. Just making the call to CPS was so nerve-racking, and then fighting with my mom over the phone and telling her about CPS felt like a huge mistake. I did not regret calling CPS, but I knew that my mom would do anything to protect my sister and that she did not care about my nephews’ safety, just the same as my sister.
All I really knew about my mom was that she hated me and that she loved my sister, and I was not sure what would happen next. There was absolutely no way my mom was not going to immediately contact my sister after finding out that I had contacted CPS and try to put her two steps ahead of me. I was sure that she had hung up the phone on me to call my sister immediately, and there was no way my sister would not know about me calling CPS by the next day.
I had a sleepless night, and the next morning when I arrived at work, my receptionist informed me that my supervisor had scheduled a meeting with me before lunch, which meant that it was urgent. As nervous as I was to learn about this impromptu meeting, I knew that it was coming. Like I said, I knew my sister was crazy, and it was clear that all she wanted to do was ruin my life.
I sat down in the meeting and cracked my knuckles to try to relieve the tension I was feeling. My two supervisors were there, and so was a higher-up I had never met before. All of them were looking at me with suspicion in their eyes, and I felt like a bug under a microscope. Sure enough, they explained to me that they had been contacted by a trusted source within my family and had been informed that I was potentially unmedicated for a severe mental illness.
They even told me that they had been given extreme details about past mental breaks that I had had, and they were concerned about me having a psychotic break within the office. But neither they nor my sister knew how prepared I had been for this meeting today. Of course, I knew that my sister was going to follow through with her threat. She had always hated me, and being able to rob me of my high-paying position would be the ultimate screw-you to her ugly little sister. I knew she would not hesitate to do it. She would revel in it.
Even if I had not been watching her nephews, even if I had not called CPS, then I am sure that she would have held it over my head and just kept blackmailing me into doing whatever she wanted me to do for her. So in a way, I was happy to be dealing with this and getting my sister’s crap out of the way.
I took out my briefcase and gave all of the supervisors a copy of my doctor’s letter, as well as the attached documentation that proved I had been diligently following my medication regimen. There was proof going back almost five years that I had never missed a prescription pickup date, and that my medication had been regular, as well as my moods. I had verification from not only my primary care physician, but my therapist and my psychiatrist as well.
I gave my supervisors an informative but concise explanation of the issues within my family and my sister’s own mental health struggles, and informed them that the claims were completely unfounded. They could be sure of my stability based on all the medical paperwork I was providing for them. My supervisors took a while to look through all the paperwork, but as soon as they saw that I had medical evidence from multiple MDs, they seemed completely satisfied and even apologized to me for the inconvenience of calling me into this meeting.
They explained that they just had a responsibility to do their due diligence before they closed the matter. My one supervisor even took the opportunity of the meeting to congratulate me on the successful quarter I had just had and bragged about my performance to the other supervisors, which made me look excellent.
I literally left the meeting giggling because of how well it had gone despite the reason for it, and thought about how poorly my sister’s moronic plan had backfired on her. I could barely focus on my work for the rest of the day because I kept smiling dumbly every single time I thought about how I got to call my sister after I finished work and tell her about how her plan had been a complete bust.
I called my sister as soon as I got back to my car that day and almost cried laughing as I told her about how the meeting had only taken about fifteen minutes because she had sounded so crazy and stupid on the phone, and my bosses had never believed her in the first place. My sister was enraged and accused me of lying and said that she was sure I had been fired and that I was just trying to save face.
This made me laugh harder, and I told her that she had failed at trying to get me fired just like she had failed at everything else in her life. I told her that the only skills she had as a woman pushing forty were lying and failing, and that even her own children were disappointed in her. My sister lost it all over again and just kept calling me the B-word and the C-word over and over again, claiming that I had completely betrayed her. She said that she was hopping on the first plane back and that she was going to make me regret every single thing I had done to her.
I was still laughing after the call, but by the time I got home and reunited with my nephews, who were in a much better mood since they had gotten dropped off at my place, I realized that this whole situation was far from over and might get worse before it got better. All I knew for sure was that my sister was completely out of her mind, and now she was flying home from another country to come get revenge on me.
I realized that I was honestly terrified of what was going to happen next. My sister basically had nothing to lose at this point, and she had always been unhinged, so I started to fear for my safety. Then I started to think about my nephews. I wondered if I had made a mistake calling CPS. A huge part of me wished my sister had lost her passport overseas and never came home.
I had gotten so much closer to my nephews in the past couple of days, and I realized that my heart was going to break when they had to leave. I did not want to say goodbye to them. I did not want to watch them walk back into my sister’s arms. She was perpetuating the same thing my mom had done to me, and I realized I hated her more than anyone on this earth.
I checked on my sleeping nephews as I could not sleep since my mind was racing, and I cried quietly in the hallway after closing the door to the guest room. They were such innocent little boys, and they did not deserve any of this.
The next day was a complete shit show. I was awoken to the sound of somebody knocking on my door, although it sounded like somebody slapping a sandbag over and over on my front door. When I opened it, there was my sister next to a guy who had to be maybe six foot five and weighed almost three hundred pounds. He was gigantic, and one of his hands was the size of my entire head. I could barely see my mom standing right behind him, and before I could even open my mouth to tell them to get the hell off my property, the man put his hand on my shoulder and shoved me down with all his might.
My sister, my mom, and the stranger all made their way inside my house, and I was collapsed on my floor as soreness sank into my shoulder where the man had thrown me down. I immediately started screaming at my sister for bringing the stranger to my house and screaming at him not to touch me, but he seemed to speak only Russian. I had no idea how this was even happening, and then I realized that my sister had beaten CPS to my house. They had been scheduled to come around eleven a.m. that day, but my sister had busted my door down at eight a.m.
My nephews had been woken up by all the commotion and were walking out of the guest room with sleepy eyes. At that point, I tried to get in between them and protect them from the stranger, but my sister barked at the man to go put my nephews in the car. It was complete chaos once they realized what was happening. Both my nephews started asking my sister to leave them with me.
I tried again to pull my oldest nephew out of the huge stranger’s arms, but this time he grabbed my head and threw it into the wall. I saw stars as I sank to the floor and watched him carry my two little nephews out of my house. There was nothing I could do. My mom was crying too, but she left with them as well.
Before they all walked out of my house, my sister walked over to me as I held my head in my hands, and when I looked up at her, she spit at me square in the face. It was the most disgusting thing anyone had ever done to me and one of the worst days of my life. They all drove off in this giant black Suburban that I had never seen my sister in before.
I had no idea who the man was, and I could not believe the trauma that my sister had just inflicted upon everyone. She had not even let them take any of their stuff. They had left without any of their clothes, neither of their Switches, and no breakfast. My heart broke for them, and I had an anxiety attack like I had never had before.
I did not realize how much it would hurt to care so much for my nephews, but I seriously loved those boys with all my heart. I just wanted to protect them and make sure that they were cared for like I never had been when I was their age. But now they were scared and shoeless in some random car with my psychotic sister and a humongous stranger.
I was so disgusted with my mom’s behavior. I could not believe she had just stood by while she watched that huge man toss me around in my own home and pull my nephews out of their aunt’s house without a word. I could not believe how evil my family had become, and I could not stop thinking about my nephews.
After I calmed down from my anxiety attack, I realized that I needed to snap into action and that time was of the essence, and I was running out of it. When I finally came to my senses, I immediately called the police, and it turned out that they were already aware of the ongoing investigation because of Child Protective Services being involved and having an open case against my sister.
I gave them all of the details of what had just transpired in my home only minutes before, and the officer on the line was actually incredibly helpful. My voice was shaking, but I tried to stay steady and focused as I described the stranger and racked my mind to try to remember the image of the license plate.
Luckily, because of how much responsibility I have in my job, I was used to picking up on and remembering little details that other people ignored, and I somehow managed to remember every single number and letter on the Suburban’s license plate. I gave the cops a description of the stranger, the full license plate, and a description of the outfits that my mom and sister were wearing.
I really do think my sister was high on some sort of uppers when she came to my house that morning. She looked absolutely feral and had this wild look in her eyes. I think she had been doing substances since she had landed overseas, wherever she was vacationing with her sugar daddy. My sister was crazy, but it was like something snapped in her, and I had never seen her act so truly unhinged and detached from reality.
After I gave the cops every single little detail that I possibly could remember about my sister and the car they had driven away in, I hung up and did my best to take my mind off things. But I literally could not focus on anything else. I could not sleep. I could not eat. I could not nap. I could not watch anything on TV. I just kept seeing my little nephews’ faces in my head every time I closed my eyes and could not think about anything else except making sure that they were okay.
I thought more about my mom and why she had always made excuse after excuse for my sister, and how it had enabled my sister to grow up into becoming a truly evil person. I even found myself thinking about my sister’s trip, wondering what kind of stuff she had done there, if she really had a sugar daddy, and how much he had paid her. I wondered if the money she had made on her trip had truly been worth it.
I even found myself thinking about what it would be like if it was just me and my nephews. I had the room for them, and now I definitely had the room for them in my heart as well. The more I thought about it, the more I wanted that outcome: my sister out of the picture, and just me and my nephews. I could give them everything that my sister could not.
If my sister and I ended up in front of a judge in a custody battle over my nephews, the judge would be staring at one woman with an overseas sugar daddy and another with multiple degrees and a penthouse office. I tried to think positive things, but random dark anxieties about my nephews’ safety kept leaking into my mind. I wondered if the giant man she had brought in my house was her sugar daddy. I wondered if he was with my nephews.
I had just been laying on my couch, staring at the ceiling and overthinking, not realizing how much time had passed, when I finally got a call back from the police station. They had been searching for the Suburban my sister had left in for hours and finally found them. The officer who had called me back was the same one from earlier and continued to be very helpful and shared a lot of details with me.
He told me that they had three different police cars on the scene when they went to pull over the black SUV, since they knew the man had already been violent that morning. Sure enough, even with firearms drawn on him, the man ran forward and tried to attack an officer and ended up getting hit in the thigh. He had punched two officers in the head and given a female officer a black eye. My sister had also physically attacked the officer who had tried to put handcuffs on her.
Initially, I tried to picture it: my insane sister and the giant stranger physically battling a group of cops on the shoulder of the highway. I could not believe that something like this was actually happening in my family and that I was not just watching it on reality TV or something.
I was still reeling in shock from everything the officer had shared with me about my sister’s arrest when he began telling me that my sister actually wanted to speak to me. I could not believe my ears, and he confirmed that my sister was sure she wanted to use her one call on me. I asked the officer if he thought she was going to ask me for bail money, and he was honest and said yes, that was what she was screaming about.
I told the officer that I was not even going to take her call and that she could rot in there for all I cared. The officer ended up giving me an understanding laugh, and I finally finished up the call without speaking to my sister. It was a complete mess. Even though my sister was finally behind bars where she belonged, I found out my nephews were in CPS protection, and although they were safe, I was so worried.
I also only had a week until my Australia trip, and if I did not go, I would be losing thousands and thousands of dollars in bookings. Also, as I had mentioned earlier, if I canceled this trip, it would have looked extremely disrespectful to my boyfriend’s family before I even got a chance to meet them. I had planned on marrying my boyfriend one day, and the last thing I wanted to do was give his family a bad first impression of me if I was going to be in their life forever.
I called CPS to check on my nephews and just asked if I could speak with them, but they did not let me. I tried to explain to them that I was family and some of the only mentally stable family they had, but they did not care. I was dealing with a different department than I had contacted before, and they were relentless.
At that point, I was completely emotionally exhausted, and I had officially run out of options. I spent the rest of the week trying my best to prepare for my trip while continuing to burst out in random tears as I remembered my nephews and thought about where they might be. I felt so bad because my boyfriend and I had been so excited for this trip for so long, and now it was finally here, and I was completely distracted and full of anxiety.
All of our conversations during the week leading up to my flight ended up being about how nervous and tense I was feeling, even though my boyfriend was incredibly kind and supportive, as always. I was so angry at my sister for how she had treated her nephews and me, and I could not believe how disrupted my life had become because of my sister’s one choice to go visit her stupid sugar daddy.
I was so thankful that my job had been understanding, but just thinking about how my sister had been so quick to try and get me fired made me feel so betrayed and distrustful of anybody in my family. Even my dad was off somewhere and not getting involved in all this drama when he surely was aware of all of it. He was spineless, just like my useless mom. My mom did not even care about her grandchildren. She had enabled my sister’s idiot choices, and that had led to her grandchildren being in the custody of strangers.
I was sitting at the bar at the airport on the day of my flight to Australia, two cocktails deep, when I started looking at some photos of my nephews that I had taken while they were staying with me. We had taken these silly photo booth pictures at the mall all together, and I could not help but begin crying all over again over how much I loved and missed them.
I decided that that would be the last time I cried until I landed back in America, and told myself that I really needed to try my best to enjoy the time with my boyfriend and his family. I had a life as well, and I could not let my sister ruin my time even from all the way across the globe.
My time in Australia ended up going amazingly. I had not seen my boyfriend in months, and when he ran to me in the airport and picked me up princess-style, I felt my heart explode from happiness. I had been through so much in those past couple of weeks, and just being back in the arms of my boyfriend, who was so warm and caring to me, made me feel so healed. He spent every moment of the trip catering to me.
Meeting his family went excellently, and I got along with both of his parents as soon as I was introduced. They turned out to be really fun, active people, and we did a lot of sightseeing together, where they took me to their favorite nature hikes and views in their area. At one point, my boyfriend took me on a hike, just the two of us, to his favorite secret waterfall, and we swam and laughed and kissed for hours. It was one of the most romantic days of my life, and I could not believe how perfectly the trip had gone even though I was so worried before I left.
But of course, when I got home, the nightmare with my sister resumed. I decided to head to the local police station a couple of days after I landed back in the U.S. to officially press charges against not only my sister but my mom for breaking and entering into my home. They had that man literally pick me up and toss me to the side so they could barge into my house, and I was not letting that slide.
When I went to file the charge, I learned that the CPS investigation into my sister was ongoing, and I was kind of frustrated to hear that they had not found anything conclusive yet. If they had just spoken to my nephews, they would have understood what they had been through. On top of that, my sister had literally been arrested with a guy who had attacked multiple cops, and I did not see how that was not proof that she was clearly an unfit parent for my nephews.
I left the police station that day content that the charges were filed against my family, but incredibly frustrated to learn that the CPS investigation was not resolved yet. I just kept worrying about my nephews’ safety and knew that them being with strangers could not have been good for them, even if it was better than being with my sister. I also could not stop thinking about how my sister had dragged them out of my house that morning without letting them grab any of their things.
My youngest nephew had this little dog plushie that he brought literally everywhere. I had been sleeping with it ever since my sister had taken my nephews away that day, and some mornings it made me want to cry just to wake up and see that little plush dog looking back at me. Like I said, my sister had not even let them put their shoes on. The poor little boys were probably so disoriented and felt so lost and abandoned, and I just wanted to make things right for them. But I felt like I had no power until CPS finally made a decision.
About a month after my sister’s arrest, after calling CPS every single day and demanding updates on her case, they had finally come to a conclusion. They had made a decision to officially remove both my nephews from my sister’s custody and put them in protective care. When the CPS agent first explained this to me, I was annoyed. I asked him to explain how that was any different than what had been going on, and they said that it now meant my sister was not only being taken to court, but she would have to go to court if she wanted custody back of her kids ever again.
I asked the CPS agent if it was likely she would win if she tried to get custody back, and the CPS agent told me that it depended on whether any other more fitting relatives would show up to court and ask for custody of my nephews. I knew immediately that that was what I was going to do, and I opened a separate court case in an effort to try to win custody of my nephews.
I did not care how long it took. I did not care how expensive the legal fees would be, and I opted to get the best lawyer that I could afford to work on my custody case, since I knew it was one of the most difficult legal battles you could enter into. But before the custody case even started, the case I had against my sister for the breaking and entering into my home was the first one to begin.
I know some people might judge me for taking my own sister to court, but I literally would have fist-fought her in a Wendy’s parking lot at that point. I figured I should follow the law if I ever wanted custody of my nephews. At the end of the day, that was my only goal in all of this. I just wanted my sister out of the way and my nephews back at home with me.
On the first day of our trial, I saw my sister in court, and it was the first time we had seen each other since the day she had broken into my house and let the man attack me. The very last interaction she and I had had was me looking up at her and her spitting a huge glob of spit directly into my face, so it was fair to say that neither of us was excited to see the other.
Well, the trial began, and eventually the judge mentioned that I had opened a custody case against her for full custody of my nephews. I guess my sister’s public defender had not informed her before then, and she was finding out for the first time in the courtroom that day. My sister has never been one to react well to bad news, and after the judge let the news slip about my custody case against her, my sister completely snapped.
Despite us being in the middle of a courtroom, my sister slowly angled her body toward me, screamed my name, and then pounced on me like some sort of crazed hyena. She was clawing and scratching at my face and trying to rip out chunks of my hair. It did not take long for the bailiff to come over and pull her off of me, but she managed to bite down extremely hard on my forearm right before he got to her. It was one of the worst pains I had ever felt in my life, and the bite looked nasty and ended up getting infected.
All this happened right in front of the judge, and once everything had calmed down, I knew my sister had just sealed her entire fate. It took months and months, almost two years actually, for all of the criminal charges against my sister to pass and for her to finally get locked up for good. She was serving a life sentence thanks to all of her crimes stacked up on top of each other, and there was no way she was seeing the light of day anytime soon, since her chances for appeal were so poor.
I never dropped the breaking and entering charges against my mom, and the only way my mom managed to stay out of prison was by testifying against my sister in court and throwing her under the bus. I do not think I have ever felt such sweet satisfaction as watching my mom blame my sister for everything that had happened while sobbing her usual crocodile tears. I could not believe that my mom was finally betraying her perfect golden child, even though it had taken a lifetime as well as the government’s help.
I knew that day, looking up at my mom on the stand, that it was the last time I was ever going to see her. It was the last time I ever wanted to see her. I had seen enough of her and my sister for a lifetime, and I was done with their constant toxicity. My sister had completely transformed my life into a never-ending legal battle, and I just wanted to have a normal day-to-day life again.
The custody battle for my nephews dragged on. Their birth father and his family began fighting me in court for full custody against them, and it just dragged the case out further. I did not care. There was not a force on earth that could keep me from my nephews now that my sister was locked up.
It took almost two years of legal battles, but eventually, I won full custody over my boys and brought my nephews back home. I will never forget how big they smiled and how tight they hugged me when they came home and found the bedrooms I had decorated for them in my house.
I walked into my youngest nephew’s bedroom, and he ran to me to show me his rediscovered Switch. I surprised him with his little plush doggy and caught him in a tight hug when he fell into my arms. The next thing I knew, my eldest nephew joined us, and both boys cried into my hair and told me how much they missed me.
My eldest boy looked up at me, smiled with his big eyes full of tears, and just said, “I knew it, Auntie. I just knew you would come back for us one day.”
